of
power and might, when the Kearneys were great chieftains, and the old
castle the scene of revelry and feasting.

She drew prettily, and it amused her to illustrate the curious tales the
old man told her of rays and forays, the wild old life of savage chieftains
and the scarcely less savage conquerors. On one of these--she called it
'The Return of O'Caharney'--she bestowed such labour and study, that her
uncle would sit for hours watching the work, not knowing if his heart
were more stirred by the claim of his ancestor's greatness, or by the
marvellous skill that realised the whole scene before him. The head of the
young chieftain was to be filled in when Dick came home. Meanwhile great
persuasions were being used to induce Peter Gill to sit for a kern who had
shared the exile of his masters, but had afterwards betrayed them to the
English; and whether Gill had heard some dropping word of the part he was
meant to fill, or that his own suspicion had taken alarm from certain
directions the young lady gave as to the expression he was to assume,
certain is it nothing could induce him to comply, and go down to posterity
with the immortality of crime.

The little long-neglected drawing-room where Nina had set up her easel
became now the usual morning lounge of the old man, who loved to sit and
watch her as she worked, and, what amused him even more, listen while she
talked. It seemed to him like a revival of the past to hear of the world,
that gay world of feasting and enjoyment, of which for so many years he
had known nothing; and here he was back in it again, and with grander
company and higher names than he ever remembered. 'Why was not Kate like
her?' would he mutter over and over to himself. Kate was a good girl,
fine-tempered and happy-hearted, but she had no accomplishments, none of
those refinements of the other. If he wanted to present her at 'the Castle'
one of these days, he did not know if she would have tact enough for the
ordeal; but Nina!--Nina was sure to make an actual sensation, as much by
her grace and her style as by her beauty. Kearney never came into the
room where she was without being struck by the elegance of her demeanour,
the way she would rise to receive him, her step, her carriage, the very
disposal of her drapery as she sat; the modulated tone of her voice, and a
sort of purring satisfaction as she took his hand and heard his praises
of her, spread like a charm over him, so that he never knew